Marketing with Technology and More

ATT/Cingular Rebate Saga Continues

The saga of the Cingular Reward Visa Cards continues.  I received three Cingular rebate cards instead of actual rebates from Cingular.  I am convinced that ATT (previously Cingular) wants to make sure that we don’t redeem them as  they have made it nearly impossible to do so. 

Today I went to our neighborhood Meijer (a local supermarket/superstore).  The cards expire in a month, and I am convinced that we are going to forget we have them, so I took them to with me to pay for the few items I was picking up.  When I get to the cashier, I enter the first card and she tells me it is denied for insufficient funds.  I tell her it is a reward card and she asks me how much remains on the card.  I tell her I have no idea, to please look it up, which she tells me is impossible.  Unless I know exactly how much the balance is on the card, she can’t use it.

Wow, talk about making them hard to use.  So there I stand with my three rebate cards in hand, unable to use any of them.  She tells me that I can call the number on the back of the card and find out the balance of the cards.  Meanwhile she will void my transaction and the person in line behind me (with the boat paddle he is probably wishing he could us on me by this time) checks out.  I tell her to forget about it, and pay for my transaction and leave.

Tonight I called the number.  Here is the next glitch.  In order to determine the balance, I must know the phone number associated with each card.  If I don’t know the number, I can look at the form that the card is attached to.  Well, since I detached the card months ago when I received it,  that becomes hard to do.  So, by trial and error, I finally conclude that across all three cards I have $23.42 of credit. 

I know the marketing goal of rebates is that consumers never actually use them.  It is the bait that the marketers never hope we swallow.  But when marketers behave like this, it is like feeding consumers poison bait.  Treat you customers with care and they will remain loyal, treat your customers like this, and you must force them to be loyal (if AT&T wonders why they must force clients into two year contracts…this is why).   

AT&T this is no way to treat customers. 

AT&T Gives iPhone a Black Eye

I did not wait hours in line, or have to pay an outrageous price.  I simply walked into the Apple store, and they had a pile of them sitting their ready for purchase.  I’ve been waiting for the iPhone.  Not because it is one of the coolest gadgets to hit the market in a while, but because as a long-time Mac user, the world of PDA’s has always been a difficult one to navigate, since PDA’s are PC centric (the exception being a TREO that worked great for me as a PDA…it just didn’t work as a phone).

I arrived home with the beautiful black box, designed and packaged in true Apple fashion.  I opened the box, connected it to the Mac.  They way the iPhone works is that when you take it out of the box, you plug it into your Mac (or those of you less fortunate your PC) and it syncs to ITunes to activate the phone (very cool).  My excitement was palpable, and then AT&T had to ruin my day.

Let me start by saying we have been AT&T (or Cingular) customers for some time, and I think, as cell phone companies go, they are great.  We have been through Nextel and Verizon and so far the service has been better and the support has been good.  We have a corporate account, and all of the employees that have phones are on the account (including myself).

So I plug in to sync, and I get this screen that tells me the phone can’t be activated, that as a business customer, I either need to go into a store or call the business center.

I call the business center, and get right through.  The very polite rep on the other end said, "oh, iPhones cannot be on corporate account"s.  Since corporate accounts are discounted, and iPhones don’t qualify for discounts, if I want to activate it, I have to cancel my corporate account and move to an individual plan (costs more, and adds one more piece of accounting work for our accounts payable department).  I told him I thought this was ridiculous, and he informed me that there was a 14-day return policy on the phone.  I would only have to pay a 10 percent restocking fee (the rep told me about 1 in 10 of the corporate users do.  Of course you only find all this out after you open the box.

Wow. Take one of the most exciting product launches in history, and put it in the hands of a bureaucratic monopolistic organization like AT&T and they forget that part of marketing is getting customers to want to keep doing business with you (not just locking them into a new two year deal).  Don’t gouge your very best customer (large ones who have many phones) to make a few more bucks in the current quarter.  At some point, Apple is going to want to sell these to other cellular providers, and the market is going to open up, so the field will not be AT&T’s forever. 

Well, the phone is cool.  Apple outshined themselves.  Too bad the first impression of the provider (which based on the fantastic sign up/syncing process through ITunes could have been a fantastic user experience and provided AT&T a chance to polish their brand) was ruined by poor marketing on AT&T’s part.

DMA and EEC Join Forces

I just listened to the Email Experience Council (EEC) and DMA’s joint conference call announcing that the DMA has acquired the EEC.  This is exciting news on one front, but also causes concern.  Perhaps it is finally DMA’s recognition that email is really an important component of the marketing mix.  Many DMA members have been using email for some time, but DMA’s reputation in the area of supporting the community and focusing on the critical issues to the industry has been disappointing.

The concern is that DMA is an organization that has traditionally focused on non-electronic communications.  Their lobbying efforts are focused on postage rates and legislation related to the sending of catalogs and envelopes.  The question is can they change this to address this new group, or is this going to be an acquisition that sours like the Association of Interactive Marketing (AIM) that was a disaster for the interactive community.  Back then, the DMA just did not get it.  With the DMA under new leadership, perhaps now they will.

So kudos to Jeanniey Mullen and her team at the EEC for building a great organization in a very short amount of time.  Those of us in the community are looking for great things in the future.